


welcome to the new age

by xahra99



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, Gen, Getting Together, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26871988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xahra99/pseuds/xahra99
Summary: A tale of boy meets emotional support mannequin.Or; Number Five struggles to survive his grim post-apocalyptic childhood.One-shot. Complete.
Relationships: Dolores & Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	welcome to the new age

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hujwernoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hujwernoo/gifts).



> This fic was inspired by a rewatch of the series, when I noticed that Five already has Delores before he finds his family in the rubble. Assuming they’re meant to be in the ruins of the Umbrella Academy in this timeline rather at the Icarus theatre, what could have shaken him badly enough he’d need a companion/emotional support mannequin before he finds the bodies of his family? Written for my beta, who wanted post-apocalyptic Five, and dedicated to hujwernoo, whose fabulous multi-novel-length series Comes and Goes in Waves got me through a pretty brutal weekend on call.  
> If you're easily triggered by peril, small dark spaces or claustrophobia, you might want to give this one a miss.  
> Title courtesy of Radioactive by Imagine Dragons. And if you liked this fic, then check out my other UA story, unsinkable.

_2019._

Five’s world is on fire.

The boiling sky is stained by smoke and ash. The smoke stings Five’s throat and makes him cough. The ash drifts down and lands on his face and arms. When he wipes the ash away it leaves dark smudges on his skin, and after a while he stops bothering to clean it away at all. His mouth is full of grit, and when he spits, the spit comes out black.

By now he’s used up far too much energy to jump, so he walks. Every building he sees has been reduced to piles of rubble or melted into slag and tangled metal girders. Hardly any walls remain higher than his head. The metal ticks slowly as it cools, like a hot stove, and he can feel the heat radiating off the ground without touching it. It’s like walking through an oven.

He stumbles over the piles of rubble, looking for something, anything, to prove he’s not alone. He finds only burnt out cars and twisted metal. There’s nothing else alive.

“ _I told you so_ ,” says his father in his head.

“Shut up, Dad,” Five tells him. His lips stick to each other and tear off little pieces of skin when he swallows. He works his mouth a little and tries to spit. He can’t.

How long has he gone without drinking? An hour? a day? Seventeen years? He can’t be sure. All he knows is that he’s never been so thirsty in his life. He’s hungry too, but his mouth is so dry he’s not sure he could eat even if he had food.

He moves a few bricks, finds nothing, and moves on. Then, as he roots through the rubble, his fingers touch glass and he unearths a smooth, warm bottle. He shakes the bottle experimentally. It sloshes.

Wine. It’s not his first choice, but it’s liquid. It’ll do.

A cork nestles snugly in the bottle’s neck. Five wastes a few minutes cursing people like Dad who are far too pretentious to drink out of screw tops. He remembers Klaus saying something about getting a cork out of bottles by putting them in your shoe but that seems too complicated, so he takes the bottle by its neck and taps it gently on the nearest piece of rubble. Nothing happens. He bites his lip and hits the bottle a bit harder.

The bottle shatters. Five doesn’t realise until later how lucky he is the neck didn’t simply explode in his hand. He’s left holding an inch of broken green-glass neck with jagged edges. The bottle’s shards lie in pieces at Five’s feet. The largest piece cups a handful of ruby-coloured wine.

Five leans forward and lifts the broken bottle oh-so-carefully, flattening his fingers round the side. The liquid inside swirls and glitters with splinters of sparkling, broken glass. Drinking the wine would be an awfully bad idea, but so would drinking nothing. 

There’s a chance it might not kill him. It’s a chance Five almost takes. But he’s not that desperate-not yet anyway. He tosses the bottle away, kneels, and scrabbles through the stones for more.

He finds many more broken bottles than full ones. Once he cuts his finger on glass so sharp, he doesn’t feel the wound until beads of blood drip sluggishly down his wrist. He removes his tie and wraps the cloth around his right hand to protect his fingers as he searches.

Eventually he finds another bottle. This time he jabs his finger in the cork and pushes it down as hard as he can. The cork resists. Five pushes harder. The cork squeezes down the narrow neck with a pop and lands in the bottle.

Five drains half right away. The wine’s still warm, and it tastes strange, dry, and wet at the same time. Perhaps it’s spoiled. Perhaps that’s how wine always tastes. At first, he’s not sure if he likes it, and then it tastes okay.

Dad wouldn’t let any of them drink alcohol, though they all knew Klaus smuggled bottles to his room. Five never bothered stealing any of his brother’s booze. This may have been a mistake. He’ll have to experiment some more once he gets back home.

He tries another jump. Blue lightning crackles round his hands, but nothing happens. He clenches his fists so hard his nails bite into his palms and repeats his attempt. Same result.

He’s only tired, he tells himself. Out of gas. He’ll find something to eat, get some rest, and go back home.

Five wanders through the ruins, swigging from the bottle. After a while, his mouth stops feeling dry and starts feeing thick and fuzzy. The razed city is a maze of ruined buildings, and he soon loses track of his location. At last he sees a slumped pile he thinks might be a grocery store, and heads towards it.

There are two ways to reach the grocery store. The first one seems an easy walk across a wide expanse of tarmac that might once have been a car park. But when Five sets foot on the tarmac his shoes sink right in and he has to hop back quickly onto a pile of bricks to avoid becoming stuck. He gives up on that way, drains the bottle and takes the second route, through the remains of a large building that’s been completely demolished. The weight of several storeys has pancaked the structure into the ground, and there’s little left but a few hundred metres of rubble arranged in a square. Some of the debris looks a little unsafe, but as this is the apocalypse nothing looks that good. Five decides to risk it.

He slips beneath a fallen joist and scrambles over the rubble, picking his way carefully. There’s broken glass buried in the bricks, and every movement raises a cloud of dust that makes him cough.

He’s about halfway there when the bricks beneath him shatter with no warning and he falls.

The sky recedes as he plunges into darkness. The empty bottle falls from his hand as he claws at the air. Distantly, he hears the glass shatter, hears himself make a small, surprised sound. A moment later his knee and elbow crack painfully against something hard and angled, breaking his fall. He skids, but there’s nothing to grasp. No way to catch himself. He skins his hands against the concrete, palms burning with blue light, but nothing happens except a faint hum. The surface beneath him abruptly runs out. Five feels a brief, painless second of weightlessness, not even long enough to make his stomach lurch. Then he crashes to the ground.

The blow winds him. He rolls on his side and inhales painfully, ribs tightening. The air is full of dust kicked up from his fall, and his eyes are full of grit. He coughs, scrubs at his face with smarting hands. But each breath comes a little easier, and the dust settles slowly, and finally he’s able to sit up and look around.

To his relief, he seems relatively unharmed. His hands smart, sure, and his whole body is bruised, but he’s had worse during training. It’s not until he looks up at the small hole far above his head that he realises how lucky he is to be alive. He must have fallen three whole floors, his fall broken by an angled concrete slab jutting out above him. The hole is a bright, jagged oval far beyond. If he squints, he can just about see smoke drifting past.

Five’s mouth is still dry, even after the wine. He has the beginnings of a raging headache, his stomach is growling with hunger, and he’s more shaken than he cares to admit. But it’s fine. He’s Number Five. He can do this. He’ll be able to jump in a few minutes. All he has to do is wait.

Five sits down on a pile of rubble, ignoring the ache in his ribs. He rests his back against a chunk of fallen concrete. The floor is concrete too, and to his left a metal rack has melted into the smooth grey surface. Twisted hangers jut from piles of half-burned clothes.

The space is sheltered by two mostly intact walls that meet at a right angle behind his back and rise nearly to ground level. The closest wall is cracked right down the centre. Soil bulges out between the fissure’s edges. When Five touches the warm earth, dirt trickles down onto the floor. He pulls his hand back hurriedly.

The space is small, and the only view worth the effort is the small ring of sky above his head. He gazes up, past the massive concrete slab angled above him, its edges fringed by shattered rebar, twisted, and bent by an unimaginable force. Pipes and cables span the space between each floor, stretching like bars between Five and the surface.

Five waits.

He knows better than to keep trying. Failed jumps will only drain his power further. To pass the time, he breaks the situation down to math. Dad’s spent years testing the limits of Five’s powers, and Five prides himself on his control. He knows he can average ten jumps before he needs to cool down for several minutes. The ground above him is well within his range, and even if he gives himself a generous margin for error, he should be out of here in half an hour. Once he escapes, things will be better. He’ll find more water. Maybe food.

He props his elbows on his knees and picks at his grazed fingers, trying not to think about all the factors affecting his spatial jumps. Exhaustion. Hunger. Thirst. Pain. Drugs (probably including alcohol, guess that wine wasn’t a great idea) Trying to hurry definitely makes things worse (never figured that one out, they’re his powers, they don’t have to make sense) Distraction.

Five grimaces. He tastes earth, gritty and warm on his tongue, then blood, and realises he’s bitten his nails to the quick. He takes a deep breath and deliberately lets his hands settle by his sides. Then he tries to meditate. After a few breaths, he realises he’s staring into space.

It’s been far longer than ten minutes. Five jumps. His hands flicker, but the rising hum fades quickly. Nothing happens.

He tries again and again, far beyond any reasonable tolerance, until he can’t summon even a shimmer of blue light. His breathing quickens until he’s panting, sweat prickling at his hairline as his heart sinks down into his shoes and his jaw aches from gritting his teeth.

Perhaps travelling seventeen years forwards has scrambled his powers. Perhaps he’s not strong enough, not smart enough, just like Dad said. Or perhaps he just needs time to rest. He doesn’t know why, and he hasn’t got the time to figure things out. Once he starts asking questions he’ll never stop. Why did the world end? Why hasn’t he found his siblings yet? Why did he ignore Dad’s orders?

That one’s easy. Reginald Hargreeves is an asshole.

Five takes a deep breath and runs his hands through his hair. A strand catches on the chewed quick of his nails, a minor irritant. He rips it away, inhaling sharply, and his head begins to clear. 

He can smell his own body, a gritty, unwashed fug that has him longing for a shower. He could drink from a shower. He imagines standing under the faucet, swallowing until his stomach sloshes, rinsing the grit from his hair. He doubts showers exist anymore. He doubts anything exists anymore.

The tapping of small stones trickling down from the surface catches his attention, but it’s the sound of something far heavier creaking above him that wrenches him to his feet. His stomach contracts as fear sends a jolt of adrenaline through his muscles. This building’s unstable. He’s running out of time.

He twists around. A pile of fallen breezeblocks stretches up like a precarious ladder behind him. It seems an impossible mountain, a dangerous jungle gym of teetering rubble. Five’s arms and legs already feel heavy, and the tips of his fingers tingle slightly when he clenches his fists. It’s a strange sensation, but not, Five thinks, a good one. 

He knows how to climb. He can do this. It’s going to be _fine._

He heads for the pile. It’s not far, only a couple of steps, but as he reaches the stack he catches a whiff of an unpleasant smell and recoils before touching the bricks. Most of the bodies on the surface are charred husks, hardly recognisable as people. This one’s relatively fresh, and it reeks of rotting flesh.

Five gulps and looks away. Then he takes a deep breath and steps over the corpse, trying his best not to breathe. He’s killed a few people himself, but he never had to spend much time with them afterwards. He wonders is if this is how Klaus feels _all the time_. No wonder he drinks.

Five begins to scale the rubble. At first he moves tentatively, then with more confidence, ascending hold by careful hold. The breezeblocks are easy to climb, almost like steps, and their rough surface provides plenty of grip. A couple of times blocks shift beneath his weight as he clambers up, but there’s always something he can grab. He makes it past the slab that broke his fall and fits his hand around a large, curved pipe. His arm muscles scream as he pulls himself up, and it takes a couple of tries before he manages to edge his left foot on the pipe, followed by his right.

He rises in a careful crouch. The pipe is narrower than it looks, but the surface is rough, good footing even for Five’s school shoes. He slides one foot past the other, balancing like a tightrope walker. To his right a half-collapsed floor gleams temptingly, polystyrene ceiling tiles propped up on wide concrete struts that promise secure footing. 

Five inches forward. When he’s a few steps from the floor his muscles cramp without warning. The spasms start in his calf muscles and work upwards, like a fist squeezing his legs. Five gasps and hunches. When he throws both his arms out to stabilise himself a shooting pain seizes his shoulder, and red light flashes behind his eyes.

He looks down. It’s a mistake. He’s passed the slab that broke his fall by now, and to his left is a drop of several storeys onto smooth concrete broken only by spears of jutting, twisted metal. To his right is a yawning smooth-sided pit he thinks must be an elevator shaft. Both are equally uninviting options.

Five swears beneath his breath. A whiff of rotting flesh drifts up from below as he sways on the pipe. Falling is an option he simply can’t afford.

He takes a deep breath and ruthlessly regains control. Cramps flicker through his limbs like lightning bolts, electric spasms lasting for a few seconds or a couple of minutes. He tells himself they’ll pass. When he tentatively pokes at his leg with his left hand his muscles twitch and jerk beneath his fingers. His world, already narrowed to the dark confines of the ruined basement, narrows further.

Moving helps, so he inches forwards, left hand stretched out for balance, right hand massaging his leg. It takes him ten minutes to edge his way towards the remnants of the floor. By the time his feet touch the surface, the cramps have almost subsided, and all that’s left is a vague, unpleasant ache in his muscles that’s almost lost in the myriad aches and pains he’s acquired in the last day. 

The hole above Five has widened from a coin to a hoop, and he gazes at the shadowed sun with the first flicker of hope in his heart. He glances around, searching for anything he can find to claw his way to safety. There’s a rack of fallen shelves in one corner, heaped with half-burnt shoes. Each shelf is far too flimsy to bear his weight alone, but stacked on top of each other, they’ll make a ramp he can use to crawl out. He’ll have to be careful when he reaches the surface-if the top layer is shallow enough, it might shatter like when he tries to pull himself up, but a good ramp should support his weight long enough for him to find firm ground.

Five sighs and steps forwards.

The floor gives way beneath him.

***

Five wakes up.

He doesn’t open his eyes straight away. It’s his favourite time, just before their alarms (synchronised, like their watches) shrill, and Mom calls them down to breakfast. It’s one of the few times he has to relax, before Dad’s strict timetable divides the day into bitesize chunks of boredom.

But something’s not right. His head aches, and one hand feels cold and wet. There’s a burst of white noise that reminds him of a river, and when his fingers twitch, he feels water ripple. He frowns without opening his eyes. It’s been a while since Diego’s tried that trick. He should know by now it doesn’t work. Just that one time, with Luther, and that was _warm_ water.

Five grips his pillow and rolls over. His cheek bumps something hard. Really hard. It’s flat and cold, and Five realises he’s cold too, cold enough to shiver. When he reaches down to pull up the covers, his hand splashes and splatters his face with beads of water. 

Five opens his eyes. There’s something gumming his eyelids closed and even once he lifts his lids he can’t really see much at all. He’s lying on a hard surface near a puddle of grey water that’s enlarging by the second. The sound of running water echoes from every corner and blots out every other sound. When he looks up, he sees water pouring from a crack above his head. He doesn’t know where it’s coming from and doesn’t care, because he is overwhelmed by sudden, urgent thirst.

He rolls over onto his side and cups his hands. The water dribbles out between his fingers, so he pushes up onto hands and knees, ignoring the throbbing ache between his temples and the chunks of concrete pressing into his bare, grazed knees, and dunks his head.

The water has a chemical tang and it’s so cold it stings his cracked lips, but Five doesn’t care. He fills his mouth, feels the water slosh around his gums and, slide down his throat as he gulps. He drinks until he can’t hold any more, and it feels amazing.

The elation fades quickly as his stomach fills with water, though it’s not until he finally stops drinking he realises he’s in a quite a lot of pain. He grades the pain methodically; Bright white across his ribs, where something feels like it’s broken loose in the fall. Red for the rawness throbbing through his hands and knees and the deep cut on his head. A dull orange for the headache sending little stabs of yellow down his spine. Blue for cold, as the rising water laps his knees.

He hisses as the water stings his grazed skin, but after a few seconds the scrapes numb, and it almost feels nice. Still, the water soaking his socks and shoes is cold enough to make him shiver. Now the initial pleasure of drinking as much as he wants is over, the water is kind of a pain. He’s cold already. He can’t afford to lose more heat.

Five shuffles backwards, but the puddle has widened, and he can’t escape the water. His back hits a hard, unyielding surface, and a jolt of pain shoots up his spine. He yelps and tries to stand, but his head cracks painfully against something rigid. He moans and he sits right back down into the spreading puddle. When he touches his head, he finds something sticky matting his hair. Perhaps the fall did more damage than he thought.

He closes his eyes, scoops up a handful of water and holds its to his face to soak the blood from his lashes. The coldness revives him a little, and as he gradually becomes aware of his surroundings his relief at finding water is replaced by rising fear.

He’s at the bottom of a tall metal-lined shaft that’s about two meters wide, sitting on a cold metal floor that’s now completely covered in a few inches of rapidly rising water. The shaft must have been sheared off in the impact just below what would be Five’s natural eye level. It would be easy for him to climb out if it weren’t for the fallen concrete slab neatly blocking most of the opening. The only gap is a small hole in the far right corner that’s about the size of a small dinner plate and far too small for Five to fit through. The water pouring through the hole is freezing cold and running faster than faucet at full blast. 

The sound of rushing water is too loud for Five to hear over his own panicked breathing, but he can feel his chest rapidly heaving, the tingle of his muscles as his body floods with useless adrenaline, and the prickle as the hairs on his arms stand on end. 

He’s stuck in that damn elevator shaft, and it’s rapidly filling with water. His fall must’ve broken that pipe. Somewhere along the way the slab fell and trapped him like a wasp in a jar. 

Five tries to jump away, back to the surface, but his power fizzles out like a spent match. He clenches his jaw so hard he feels his teeth crack together, knots his fists and tries again. Nothing. Not even a faint shimmer. 

He doesn’t give up. He braces himself against the wall and tries to shove the slab away, but the effort only makes his headache worse. When it’s clear the concrete isn’t moving any time soon, he struggles to squeeze himself through the gap. It’s only when he realised there’s no way he’s going to fit that panic really sets in.

He’s always known he was going to die in a vague way, the way he knows that someday he’ll be forty, that Vanya will grow up to be a virtuoso, that Klaus will drink himself to death and Luther will always be a douche. Now he’s going to die, and he’s going to die alone. Right here. Right now, or at least very soon. The water is up to his knees. Five estimates that from the flow he has fifteen minutes at most before the shaft is completely flooded. He checks his calculations and comes up with five minutes less. Math is often correct, but rarely comforting.

He exhales in a long, shuddering moan. Then he does something he swore to himself, after that first desperate realisation outside the Umbrella Academy, he wouldn’t do.

He shouts for help.

A small part of him is still ashamed despite his desperate situation. He’s Number Five, after all. His work is killing bad guys, saving people. People don’t save him.

He shouts for Vanya because she tried to warn him. He shouts for Ben because he’s always kind. He shouts for Dad because he no longer cares how he’ll be punished.

He shouts for anyone. Then he screams himself hoarse. 

Nobody comes.

Five tells himself they can’t hear him over the water. Deep inside, he knows the truth. There’s nobody left. Nobody at all.

He’s so fucked.

He swallows and scrubs at his eyes with his sleeve. Something slides above him, sending rubble rattling down onto the slab. Five cringes back instinctively against the wall, though he wonders why he bothers even as he moves. The sounds fades quickly, and the slab doesn’t shift, so he wraps his arms around himself for warmth and squints at the surface through the hole. Water droplets drench him further, which would bother Five if he weren’t already soaked to the skin.

His initial fall seems a lifetime ago. He’s starting to forget what things looked like on the surface, never mind back at the Academy. The hole he fell through initially has widened a bit, and he can see fire flickering beside it. The sky is a weird yellow-grey colour, shimmering with heat. The colour probably doesn’t bode well, but it’s not going to be Five’s concern for much longer.

As he squints up at the light, he notices something new above him. It looks like a hand.

Five feels a shock of cold as the water sloshes round his waist. He ignores it and peers up at the sky. It’s definitely a hand and he can tell from the long slender fingers and the graceful angle that it belongs to a woman. He didn’t see anyone up there before. The last humans he saw were his family at breakfast.

Five pokes his arm through the hole up to the shoulder and waves frantically before he realises the hole’s far too dark for her to see him. He shouts again, but his voice is so hoarse he can’t hear even himself. He sags back against the shaft. He’s shaking now, hard enough to ripple the surface of the water, and he can’t feel his feet. His sodden blazer clings limply to his body.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and fixes the image of the outstretched hand in his mind. Then he curls his hands into fists and concentrates. At first nothing happens. Then the water starts to glow blue.

Five jumps.

He lands on his feet. A jolt reverberates up his legs as his heels hit concrete, and he falls to his knees. The air up here is much warmer than the hole, but his soaking clothes are heavy. He feels tears prickle the corner of his eyes, takes a deep shuddering breath, and wipes his nose on the back of his hands, sniffing angrily. He’s not crying. He’s _thirteen_. He’s not a kid.

When he looks up, eyes blurry with tears, he sees the hand stretching out towards him, and he takes it. The palm’s a little cold, but his own hands are like blocks of ice. He can barely feel his own fingers, and it takes him longer than he thinks it should to realise something’s wrong. The hand he’s holding doesn’t move. Doesn’t twitch. It’s just _there_.

When he looks up, she’s staring straight at him, lips curved in a faint smile. She’s lost her wig, and she only has one hand, the one he’s holding. Her body ends at the torso. 

Five lets out the breath he hasn’t realized he was holding, but he doesn’t let go. The mannequin’s plastic skin is smooth, but her hand’s still warm with remembered heat. Her fingers are curved like a real person’s and her palm fits neatly into his. If he closes his eyes, he can almost pretend that she’s Mom. 

He knows he should move. His ribs still hurt and climbing across rubble will be slow going. The water in the shaft has slaked his thirst for now, but he should find more soon. Food, too. Shelter. There’s so much he should do, and just the thought exhausts him. He’s about to let go of her hand when he hears a clear voice in his head. 

_I can’t imagine how you must feel right now._

Five hesitates.

The voice is warm and caring. It doesn’t sound like anyone he knows. It’s too assured to be Vanya, too human for Mom, too calm for Diego. It’s certainly nothing like Dad. 

_I can’t imagine how much pain you’re in_ , it continues. _How scared you are._

Five bristles. “I’m not scared.”

_Of course you’re not_ , she says soothingly _. I just want you to know I’m here. In case you need someone to talk to for a bit. You’re not alone._

Five bites his lip. The tears are back, burning at the corners of his vision. He swallows. 

“Thanks,” he says out loud.

It might be a trick of the light, but he could swear her smile widens.


End file.
